3 Great Norwood Street (formerly 1 Great Norwood St)

For very many years this was a butchers shop and in 1851 the shop belonged to William Hanks, a master butcher. By 1854 this had changed to a butcher called Robert Filmer, who participated in the town's Christmas Meat Exhibition of that year.

1906

By 1871 the first of the James family occupied these premises in the person of Thomas James senior, a family butcher & farmer, who was an active member of the Gloucestershire Agricultural Society. The James's were related to Leigh James, the butcher in Bath Road.

​In August 1907 Thomas's son, Thomas junior, who also worked in the business, tragically died at the age of 35 from complications arising from influenza. Tom was a well-liked man who had been an active member of the Cheltenham Swimming and Water Polo Club. His death was a further loss to the family, his elder brother Jack having died in South Africa five years earlier.

Gloucestershire Echo, 29th November 1950

​In the 1920s and 30s the business was run by Benjamin James, who was a town councillor. In about 1938 the shop passed to his son Thomas James, who was still here in the early 1980s. In 1950 the shop could claim to be Cheltenham's oldest family butcher. This advertisement of that year reminds us that Britain was still in the grip of food rationing 5 years after the Second World War and that customers were required to register with local shopkeepers.